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EPILOGUE
In
the end, something vital remains to be said about the enduring
phenomenon of mystical experience itself. It has little to do
with epistemology or metaphysics – which at best are only so many
superficial tangents to the sublime experience which, we have seen,
remains impenetrable to reason. We are, I think, mistakenly inclined to
see this deeply personal and profoundly religious experience as somehow
confined to the lives of a few remarkable individuals who by and large
have been saints in a strictly canonical sense. We are intimidated by
what we perceive to be the austerity of the lives they had lived, and
tend to see them as persons quite apart from ourselves – and quite
fortunately so. Very likely we are acquainted with one narrative or
another detailing the severity of the lives they had lived – accounts
sometimes embellished, as all hagiography to some extent is – with the
great trials and hardships they endured in an adamantine faith that
appears quite impossible to most of us. They are figures who loom
largely in unforgettable but nevertheless dusty tomes from an age of
faith as distant from us as the alchemist’s art.
As a consequence,
we tend to consign the experience that shaped and ultimately defined
their lives to the same reliquary to which we reverently, but no less
resolutely, shelf these abstruse speculative systems together with the
devout biographies that accompany them – for it no longer seems viable
in our age or even possible in our lives. In short, the great mystical
enterprise; indeed, the mystical phenomenon itself, tends to be
perceived essentially as an historical
phenomenon. This, I think, is due in large part to the emphasis placed
upon the medieval mystics who, not surprisingly, had flourished in an
age of faith, an age in which the Church predominated and whose every
institution to some extent understood itself in relation to God. It was,
moreover, the medieval mystics who had succeeded in systematically
formulating this ancient doctrine into a viable Christian synthesis
around which, at least implicitly, entire contemplative communities were
subsequently formed. The goal, after all, of every contemplative is
contemplation – and perfect contemplation culminates in union. These
most conspicuous figures in the history of mysticism, confined to a
fixed and distant era, seem – with few notable exceptions since – to
have formed the terminus of a tradition whose impulse had somehow
withered with the dawn of the Renaissance. But this, of course, is not
true. The many Discalced Carmelite monasteries throughout the world –
which have not merely survived, but have flourished – are
extraordinary testimonies to the vibrant continuity of this tradition.
They, and other contemplative orders – to say nothing of the lives of
many individuals living contemplatively within the world at large –
are reminders in this postmodern era that the ancient mystical impulse
is indomitable, incessant, irrepressible – even eternal.
In the end, I think
that the invitation to union is far more common than we suppose. I
further think that the basic intuition underlying the experience of this
invitation is, however indistinctly – and however reluctant we are to
concede it – perceived as God. I am equally persuaded, however, that
it is a perception we are likely to distort, resist, or even arrogantly
dismiss. The reasons for this, to be sure, are many and varied. But I
also think that this invitation leaves an indelible impression. However
successful we are in explaining it away, this unmistakable invitation, I
am convinced, is etched into the heart by God Himself, and continues to
beckon us, despite the disdain, even the reproach of reason, to
something beyond ourselves, something infinitely greater than our
selves. And our reluctance to respond to this invitation seems, in the
end, to be rooted in fear; the fear that, in the words
of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “if we give Him our finger, He will take
our whole hand.” In an age that blenches before any absolute
commitment whatever, many of us simply are not prepared to make a
commitment as absolute as the invitation requires. For ultimately, we
realize, it entails far more than our hand, or even our heart,
embracing, as it does, the totality of our being in the totality of His
love.
CONCLUSION
For all
our speculative efforts to arrive at some rational tangent between
epistemological accountability and the phenomenon of ecstatic union, we
have achieved nothing more than a logical excursus into a deeply and
profoundly preterlogical reality. The rigorously austere terms of logic
only yield a pronouncement on form, prescinding from substance. To
understand consonance in form is extrinsic to the subject of which it is
predicated – except in purely relational terms. That the terms
putatively inherent in phenomena accord with logic tells us nothing of
the phenomena. Either they accord with logic or reason or they do not.
No more. Logic makes no existential statements.
So what does this mean? It
means that this tedious discourse has merely presumed to demonstrate
that no conflict obtains between the canons of reason and the phenomena
of ecstatic union. It gives us absolutely no insight into the experience
itself – only the relational consonance inherent within it.
Perhaps a
final, even apposite, metaphor remains: for those who have known nothing
of conjugal union, the nature, the form, the method – all the
physiological mechanics – of consummating that union are clearly
understood. But however exhaustive, however extensive, however
comprehensively they are apprehended, they yield nothing, absolutely
nothing, of the nature of the experience itself. However rich their
vocabulary, however profound their knowledge, not only will both be
obviated by that union, but within that union both will become utterly
superfluous to it.
Ecstatic union? Every
other union is the merest, the most tenuous metaphor – for
this sublime union of the soul with God.
It is the ultimate
intimacy between the soul and God, the Bride and the Groom; the
inexpressible consummation of love that demurs from the intrusion of
reason, the prurience of language, the invasiveness of words, and none
may intrude upon it in a futile and ultimately officious attempt to
understand what can only be consummated.
A curtain
is drawn that only the Lover may know the Beloved.
END
About the
Author
The author studied philosophy in the Bachelor’s,
Master’s, and Doctoral programs at Boston University. The
Metaphysics received the Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat
from the Censor Librorum of the Archdiocese of Boston in an
earlier redaction. The author is a member of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association and a contributing editor to the
Boston
Catholic Journal.
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